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At its peak, 41,000 bakwits from Datu Piang’s conflict areas and neighboring towns, including Midsayap and Aleosan in North Cotabato, sought refuge in the poblacion from the outbreak of armed hostilities that greeted the botched signing on August 5, 2008 of the already initialed Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) between the government (GPH) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). On this Wednesday morning of October 24, 2012, the covered court and the gazebo are being spruced up with colorful pandala (decorative flags) for a wedding reception the next day. The town hall is no longer a “ghost” hall as there’s a flurry of activities and Mayor Genuine Kamaong is up on the second floor in his office, receiving visitors, including Hadja Kadiguia Kasim, barangay captain of Liong. Both officials have expressed optimism the GPH-MILF Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro (FAB), signed in Malacanang on October 15, would bring peace....
In two areas where MindaNews stopped to ask the MILF mujahideen what they feel about the recently signed Framework Agreement and how they define “normalization,” they would break into a smile, recalling their feelings while wathching the October 15 signing in Malacanang on TV, one group manning a detachment saying they watched it in an area in North Cotabato while the other group, resting near and under one of the many bridges along that long stretch to the Datu Piang poblacion, narrating how they and their comrades were teary-eyed as they watched the proceedings from the MILF’s Camp Darapanan in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao....
BY THE RIVER. MILF guerrillas at their temporary base under a bridge in Datu Piang, Maguindanao on October 24. MindaNews photo by Carolyn O. Arguillas
http://www.mindanews.com/top-stories/2012/11/04/from-battlegrounds-to-playgrounds-smiles-and-hopes-for-peace-in-datu-piang-2/
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